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Roracc 6rcclcy 



Hddress 

On the Centenary Observance 
of f>orace 6reeUy 
at 
Hmberst, f»few F)anip9bire 

february 3^ 1911 

By Hlbert 6. pUtebury 



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ADDRESS ON THE CENTENARY OBSERVANCE OF HORACE GREELEY 
AT AMHERST, NEW HAMPSHIRE, FEBRUARY 3, 1911 
BY ALBERT E. PILLSBURY 

THE journalists are now the true kings and clergy. Hence- 
forth historians, unless they are fools, must write not of 
Bourbon dynasties, and Tudors, and Hapsburgs, but of 
Broad-sheet dynasties, and quite new successive names, according 
as this or the other able editor, or combination of able editors, 
gains the world's ear." 

Thus spake Thomas Carlyle in 1831. In the same 
year, perhaps at the same moment, there found his way 
into the city of New York a raw country lad from New 
Hampshire, who had it in charge of fate to make the Amer- 
ican kings and clergy bend before the first "broad-sheet 
dynasty" known to the new world. The people of his 
native town and blood, the tillers of the soil that produced 
him, are gathered here in his memory. The eager interest 
which the world takes in every point and circumstance of 
the life of a noted personage extends to the place of his 
birth, and this accident has made many a place otherwise 
insignificant a place of pilgrimage. Today this modest 
New Hampshire town claims and holds a wide attention as 
the spot where a famous and historic character first saw the 
light of day one hundred years ago. 

The story of Horace Greeley is the familiar fireside tale 
of a boy who worked his way from sordid poverty to honor- 
able fame and a place in history, by the power within him. 

3 



Greeley is unique even among what are called self-made 
men. He made the ascent in spite of personal faults and 
weaknesses that would have stopped the way and ruined 
the prospects of any but a man of compelling genius. The 
people always made merry of his foibles, but he secured and 
held for a generation a commanding influence over public 
opinion and the councils of the nation. The man who did 
this calls for attention. 

We must take a look at the Amherst boy, the ten years 
of Horace that belong to this town. It will interest this 
audience to observe that Amherst may take credit for devel- 
oping, even in ten years, most of the traits that afterward 
made him famous. When he had become a celebrity the 
usual crop of boyhood tales began to appear, many of them 
absurdly exaggerated, as he declared, but there are some 
that rest on his own authority. There is no doubt that as 
a boy he was a prodigy. A frail, odd, tow-headed child, 
nervous and sensitive, timid of manner and squeaky of 
voice, he seemed to have eyes more for print than for any- 
thing else. He learned to read, nobody ever knew how, 
before he could speak plainly, and never left oiff reading. 
It is said that he could read any book or paper upside 
down, and there are indications that after he grew to man's 
estate he may have read some things by this process of in- 
version. If reading came to Horace by nature, as Dogberry 
said, writing came not at all. The crow's tracks that fol- 
lowed his pen were all his life a national laughter. A type- 
setter in the Tribune oflSce once said that if Belshazzar had 

4 



seen that hand-writing on the wall it would have killed him 
on the spot. Horace had to educate himself, and he did it, 
on the whole, so much better than schools or colleges did it 
then, or do it now, as to inspire him with a lifelong con- 
tempt for colleges and college graduates — the most ignorant 
of all horned cattle, as he called them. He used to walk 
down the road to meet the weekly Farmer's Cabinet ^ and 
absorb the whole contents of the paper on the way home. 
He scoured the neighborhood for books, and read by the 
light of the fire, as Abraham Lincoln did, everything in 
print that he could lay hands on. 

Unlike Lincoln, he did not mingle much in the sports and 
games of the other boys. He sometimes went fishing, but 
he never would use a gun, and it is said that he stopped his 
ears at the sound of a gun. He seems to have had a woman's 
horror of bloodshed and slaughter, that followed him 
through life and probably affected his public conduct on one 
or two notable occasions. He was easily first at school, and 
cried if by any mischance he lost the place at the head of the 
class. A biographer says that he had read the Bible 
through, and beaten the town in spelling-school, in his fifth 
year. His reputation extended beyond the town limits. 
The Bedford school committee voted that no pupil from 
any neighboring town should be admitted to their schools 
" except Horace Greeley." He was a good-natured boy, a 
favorite in school and among the neighbors. He tried to 
smoke at ^ye years of age, and never tried again, never 
touched liquor after his thirteenth year, though liquor was 



then so common that he describes in his "Recollections" 
the tables set with rum and brandy in front of hospitable 
doors at the ordination of President Lord in this village, and 
if swearing is, as somebody has called it, only the unneces- 
sary use of profane language, Horace Greeley, boy and 
man, can probably be acquitted of all personal vices. 

They picture Horace as wearing in summer the remnant 
of a palm-leaf hat, a tow shirt never buttoned at the neck, 
and tow trousers with legs of diverse lengths, and in winter 
the same with jacket and shoes. Like all farmer's boys of 
those days, he had to take his share of work, and some 
rough work. He rode the horse to plow, and was thrown 
off, helped his father for a while in a saw-mill, picked 
stones a good deal, which he did not like, and picked hops 
in the season, which was more like play, for it brought the 
young people together in a sort of neighborhood frolic 
as some of the oldest here may remember. 

In the winter of 1821, before Horace was ten years old, he 
had to take leave of this place of his birth. Debt and mis- 
fortune drove the Greeley family from Amherst to Vermont 
and thence to a Pennsylvania wilderness. Horace's young 
ambition had already devoted him to the " art preservative 
of all arts," and he was resolved to be a printer. After 
many rebuffs, in the spring of 1826 the tall, pale, awkward 
boy, as he described himself, was found at the case in the 
printing office of the Northern Spectator, at East Poultney, 
Vermont. In his nineteenth year he had mastered the 
trade, was first in the village debating society, and the local 



cyclopedia of everything political. But the Spectator failed, 
and he lost his place. He had no money, no prospects, no 
influential friends, and after looking here and there for 
work and finding none, the forlorn and friendless lad start- 
ed afoot, with stick and bundle, on the journey that ended 
after many stormy years at the threshold of the White 
House which he was not to enter. He drifted about, seek- 
ing and finding here or there a job at the case, and finally, 
on the seventeenth day of August, 1831, the young tramp- 
printer brought up in New York city, his bundle on his 
back and ten dollars in his pocket, dreaming, perhaps, but 
knowing as little as the world knew of what was before him. 

We must pass by the struggles and ventures of his early 
years in the city, the Morning Post, his first bantling of 
three weeks, the New Yorker, successful everywhere but in 
the till, the Jeffersonian, the Log Cabin, of the famous 
Tippecanoe campaign of 1840. They made reputation for 
him, the Log Cabin a national reputation, but no money. 
The next trial proved to be the master-stroke. On the tenth 
day of April, 1841, Horace Greeley issued the first number 
of the New York Tribune,. From this time he was making 
history. The Tribune was to become an American insti- 
tution, and to wield a more direct and powerful influence 
upon the recasting of the American nation than any other 
product of the newspaper press. 

We cannot speak of Greeley without speaking of the Tri- 
bune. They were one and inseparable. The paper began 
as a Whig journal, devoted to Clay and a tariff for pro- 



tection, and with the strong leaning which Greeley always 
had toward all social and political reforms — too strong a 
leaning, perhaps, though while his mind was open to all the 
"isms'*he really embraced few or none of them. He was 
anti-slavery, though not an avowed abolitionist, from the day 
when he witnessed the rescue of a fugitive slave in Ver- 
mont. The infamies of the annexation of Texas, the Mex- 
ican war, and the fugitive-slave law of 1850, stirred 
Greeley's soul to its depths and put him into the fore- 
front of the political Free Soil and anti-slavery movement. 
Thenceforth the slave-power had no bolder or more resolute 
antagonist, nor any whose blow was more direct or deadly. 
He openly encouraged resistance to the fugitive-slave law, 
heaped contempt upon the Dred Scott deliverance of the 
Supreme Court, which he justly declared to be " of no more 
authority than the opinion of the loafers in a Washington 
bar-room,'* rallied the country to the defence of bleeding 
Kansas, and led the way in bringing all the anti-slavery 
forces together in the Republican party. The historic 
character and influence of the Tribune grew out of the 
slavery question more than any other. It began to be a 
public force at the time when slavery was pushing all other 
questions aside, and its power grew as the heat of the con- 
flict waxed fiercer. The slave oligarchy felt Greeley's steel 
in their vitals, and it was not long before they paid the 
Tribune the high compliment, which it shared with Garri- 
son's Liberator, of an attempt to exclude it from the mails 
in the slave states. 

8 



From the late forties the Tribune was the leading news- 
paper of the country. In a letter written thirty-nine years 
ago today, February third, 1872, Greeley said that in 
ordinary times the circulation of the daily had been 40,000 
and of the weekly 120,000 copies. Figures never measured 
the influence of the Tribune, which extended far beyond its 
own readers. In Greeley's time a leading newspaper was 
a social and political power, addressed to thinking people 
and read for its opinions not less than for the news. It 
usually represented a real character, and often a great 
character. It had a constituency, built up by the public 
confidence in the man behind it. Of all these Greeley was 
first in the eye of the people, and the Tribune spoke with 
his voice. Founded in protest against the rowdy journalism 
of the Jefferson Brick type, so justly stigmatized by Charles 
Dickens, it was clean, independent, honest and fearless. 
Greeley talked to the people in their own tongue and, as it 
were, face to face. A habit of signing his articles with his 
name or initials gave them a direct personal element, and 
many an honest countryman who never saw Horace 
Greeley felt that he had talked with him and knew him. 
On occasions he could smite with a rough and heavy hand, 
whose blow was terrible and sometimes fatal. Greeley was 
neither nice nor polite in his choice of words. Naturally 
the most peaceable and kindly of men, he was hot of temper 
and a master of vituperation. The much-quoted " You lie, 
you villain," was not an every-day affair, but he answered 
the fool according to his folly, and never stuck at epithets 



if he thought they were deserved. The clearness and vigor 
of his style, the open sincerity of his opinions, and the 
universal confidence in his integrity, gave him a hold on the 
popular mind unparallelled in journalism. 

The Tribune found its way into every nook and corner 
of the northern states, and followed the tide of emigration 
to the West. With the farmers, who regarded Greeley as 
one of themselves, it was especially strong. Every other 
newspaper quoted it, and somebody said that no country 
editor put pen to paper until the Tribune had told him 
what Greeley thought. It was not only the most widely 
read but the most universally talked about. Toiling and 
thinking multitudes absorbed it, believed it, and voted by 
it. Fletcher of Saltoun said that he who can make the 
ballads of a nation need not care who makes its laws. The 
real leader and ruler, in whose hands all lesser men are 
puppets, is the man who shapes the course of public 
thought. Such was Horace Greeley. In the critical period 
when the forces of public opinion were aligning themselves 
for the final struggle with the slave-power, a moral issue 
was uppermost, and the appeal was to the moral sense. 
Greeley reached and stirred the public conscience. It must 
be reckoned his greatest service to the country that he gave 
the Tribune a place with the Liberator, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 
the Biglow Papers, and the stirring lyrics of Whittier, as 
one of the great moral forces that settled the public resolve 
against slavery and steeled the nation for war. 

The Tribune made Greeley the best-known man in 

10 



America. Never holding public office but to serve out 
three months of an unexpired term in Congress at the end 
of 1848— in which fragment of time he broke up the abuses 
of the mileage system and brought in the national policy of 
the homestead laws— he was the most public character in 
the country. The oddities of his appearance and manner, 
the patriarchal head and face, the old hat and old white 
coat, the cravat awry, the shapeless trousers, the shambling 
gait, celebrated and exaggerated in print and caricature, 
made him one of the sights of New York, and would have 
been recognized at any cross-roads in the United States. As 
the Tribune was more talked about than any other paper, so 
Greeley himself was more talked about than any other man. 
His name was familiar to every tongue, and his character to 
every man who could read. Any bright schoolboy could 
have told what "H. G." stood for, and any intelligent 
citizen could have told what Horace Greeley stood for. 

It was not the Tribune alone that did this. Greeley's 
activities were many and amazing. Politics and journalism 
never monopolized the energy of this phenomenal mind. 
He was always at work for the social and industrial welfare 
and progress of the people. Whittier called him "our 
later Franklin." There is poetic license in this comparison, 
but it may be doubted whether there has been since Frank- 
lin's any more widely useful life. With the Tribune on his 
shoulders, he contributed to other newspapers and maga- 
zines, delivered addresses on all sorts of occasions, lectured 
before country lyceums as the fashion then was, spoke 



11 



from the stump in political campaigns, produced volumes 
of travel, social reform, agriculture, political economy, and 
one work of permanent historical value. The American 
Conflict would have made an enduring reputation for him 
if he had written nothing else. His part in politics was not 
merely the part of a writer and speaker. For many years 
the noted triumvirate of Seward, Weed and Greeley had a 
direct and powerful hand upon the political machinery of 
New York and of the nation. With unbounded faith in the 
future of the country, and eager for its developement, he was 
one of the first to urge a Pacific railway when such a pro- 
ject was laughed at, and Greeley's persistent "Go west, 
young man" became the rallying cry of a national move- 
ment that peopled new states. 

All his industry and success never made him rich. He 
had no love for money, and he was never a business man. 
Swindlers could overreach him and imposters get money 
from him, though the constant appeal to his easy benevo- 
lence was sometimes too much for his temper. A solemn- 
looking character hung about his desk one day until the 
hurried editor demanded his errand. " I want you to give 
me a contribution" said the stranger, "to save thousands 
of our fellow-creatures from going to hell." "I won't give 
you a blanked cent," was the reply. " Not half enough of 
them go there now." Greeley was a Universalist. 

We are here to remember Horace Greeley, not to praise 
him. His character presents a strange combination of 
strength and weakness. He was wise as a sage and simple 

12 



as a child, fixed in conviction and erratic of judgment, full 
of benevolence to every living creature, and almost as full 
of prejudices, a lover of man and a hater of men. The 
pugnacity of his honest nature struck out fiercely at 
every rogue, hypocrite and humbug, and at some just men 
and causes. Where there are blows to give there are blows 
to take. It is no wonder that this dynamic man of peace 
was more abused, admired, villified, hated, trusted and fol- 
lowed, than any other man of his time. 

With the approach of the rebellion, Greeley became a 
greater figure than before. His place in journalism had 
long been first. He was about to take a larger place in the 
history of the country. In his erratic course through this 
period there are some episodes that cannot be recalled with 
satisfaction. His impulsive temperament betrayed him into 
conduct which has left shadows upon his reputation, but 
there is no stain upon it. His integrity of character and 
purity of motive were never questioned. 

In the historic contest of 1858 between Douglas and 
Lincoln, Greeley's mistaken sympathy with a Democrat in 
revolt against a Democratic administration, and his views 
of party policy, led him to advocate the reelection of Doug- 
las. Naturally and justly resented by the Republicans of 
the West, this was more than atoned for two years later. 
In the Republican convention of 1860, at Chicago, Greeley 
cast all his strength against Seward, the leading candidate, 
and cleared the way for the nomination of Abraham Lin- 
coln. This act was charged to personal resentment against 

13 



Seward, and not without some reason, but Greeley was 
more than justified by the results. In the light of subse- 
quent events, the man whose influence was decisive in 
making Seward give place to Lincoln as the leader of the 
nation through the throes of civil war appears a chosen 
instrument in the hand of Providence. 

In the perilous years of President Lincoln's adminis- 
tration,the wisdom of his attitude in refusing to move faster 
than the people moved made every leader of public opinion 
an important character. Of the leaders of public opinion 
the man who wielded the power of the Tribune was second 
only to Lincoln himself, and his mistakes could not escape 
notice and criticism. There was no purer patriot, no more 
loyal friend of freedom and of the Union, than Horace 
Greeley, but he was subject to the limitations of his nature. 
When the revolt of the slave states was threatened Greeley 
scouted it, declaring that the South could no more unite on 
such a scheme than a parcel of lunatics could conspire to 
break out of Bedlam. When secession actually began, he 
at first advised that the rebellious states be allowed to go in 
peace. So potent was his influence that President Lincoln 
was moved to interpose against the further expression of 
such views. There was no more of this after the attack on 
Sumter. When rebellion had fairly unmasked its front of 
war, the Tribune raised the cry of " On to Richmond," and 
the popular clamor drove our raw levies into the disaster of 
Bull Run. Despite his just disclaimer of personal respon- 
sibility, the public fury at the defeat was turned upon 

14 



Greeley, always a sensitive man in spite of his fighting 
traits, and drove him into a fever that threatened his life, 
in which he addressed to the president a despairing letter 
that made IJncoln, as his biographers say, "sigh at the 
strange weakness of human nature." 

Greeley's impatient temper could not await the cautious 
and sure-footed steps of the great president toward the 
freeing and arming of the slaves. The " Prayer of Twenty 
Millions," published in the Tribune, of August 19, 1862, 
protesting against the slow enforcement of the Confiscation 
Acts upon the slaves of rebels in arms, drew from the pres- 
ident a public reply, personally addressed to Greeley, 
which stands out as one of the most striking examples alike 
of Lincoln's political sagacity and his wonderful power of 
clear and direct statement. In this letter is the much- 
quoted, misunderstood and perverted declaration, "If I 
could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do 
it." It is a singular proof of human fatuity that people who 
read our history, and some who write it, even in the light of 
what followed still profess to believe that Lincoln would 
have allowed slavery to be preserved, and quote this letter 
for the proof. He declared that his purpose was to save 
the Union, and every student of Lincoln's life knows that 
there never was a time after 1854 when his unerring and 
prophetic vision did not see that the Union could not be 
saved with slavery. When he had become president, with 
the issues of war in his hands, there were occasions when 
the duty of preserving a united North compelled him to 

15 



temporize, and to be all things to all men. It is plain that 
he seized the occasion of Greeley's protest to make this 
public declaration only because it would help to disarm the 
hostility of Northern conservatives to the policy of eman- 
cipation on which he was already resolved. He could not 
yet publicly declare that he was resolved upon it, though 
this can almost be read between the lines, especially of the 
opening passage of his letter. But it need only be remem- 
bered that at the moment when Lincoln penned this letter 
to Greeley, on the 22nd day of August, 1862, there lay upon 
his table, ready-winged for its flight, the proclamation of 
freedom, which had already been announced to the cabinet 
council and a month later was given to the world. 

In 1864, when final victory was in sight, Greeley seemed 
appalled at the continued outpouring of blood and treasure, 
called for a cessation of hostilities, and urged the president 
to negotiate for peace with rebel agents then in Canada. 
The tactful president met this demand by promptly de- 
puting Greeley himself upon the mission, which came to 
nothing. He did not favor the renomination of Lincoln, 
and predicted his defeat if nominated, though supporting 
him vigorously in the campaign. The patient president 
believed and declared Greeley incapable of wilful miscon- 
duct, and Greeley afterward atoned, so far as he could, for 
his attitude toward Lincoln in his lifetime, acknowledging 
him to be " the one Providential leader, the indispensable 
hero of the great drama." 

Upon the collapse of the rebellion, Greeley's benevolent 

16 



impulses led him to take ground at once for universal am- 
nesty and universal suffrage. The freedman should vote, 
and the rebel should be forgiven. In line with this con- 
viction he made, on invitation, a journey to Richmond, in 
1867, to become bail for the release of Jefferson Davis 
from further military custody. This generous if misguided 
act raised a storm of denunciation. The Tribune was as- 
sailed with a chorus of "Stop my paper," the sale of the 
American Conflict came to a standstill, and even Greeley*s 
personal and social standing was threatened. A leading 
club called him to account with a view to expulsion; to 
which he rejoined with characteristic vigor, " You evidently 
regard me as a weak sentimentalist, misled by a maudlin 
philosophy. I arraign you as narrow-minded blockheads, 
who would like to be useful to a great and good cause but 
don't know how." The club did not pursue the subject. 
When the Fifteenth Amendment had been ratified, Greeley 
declared " the books closed," that all the crimes of rebellion 
should be overlooked and all remembrance of them merged 
in complete reconciliation. He failed in judgment here, as 
he had at other critical periods. Even the contemptuous re- 
jection of the constitutional amendments by the rebel states 
had not taught him that the snake was only scotched, not 
killed. The South was still determined, as it is to-day, to 
preserve the substance if not the form of slavery, and after 
almost half a century we find it still in open rebellion against 
the Federal constitution, by fraud instead of force, with 
Greeley's hope of universal or even impartial suffrage yet 
unrealized. i"^ 



We come to the climax, and the catastrophe. In May, 
1872, the Liberal Republican convention, at Cincinnati, 
nominated Greeley for the presidency. This futile but not 
unpatriotic movement was a Republican revolt against 
President Grant, led by eminent and high-minded men 
whose confidence was shaken, perhaps too soon, by the 
mistakes of his first administration and the sinister influ- 
ence of worthless camp-followers about him. The Cin- 
cinnati platform, unexceptionable in tone and character, 
followed Greeley in declaring for universal amnesty and 
impartial suffrage, and Greeley's letter of acceptance ex- 
pressed his belief that the people. North and South, were 
ready to " clasp hands across the bloody chasm" — a phrase 
that passed into a popular shibboleth. Forthwith upon 
this nomination all the vials of partisan wrath were 
opened and poured out upon him. He had asserted his 
independence of party, the mortal sin of politicians. All 
that he had done for the party, and for the country, was 
forgotten in a moment. Calumny outran itself, and Gree- 
ley was lampooned, abused and reviled with a brutal fer- 
ocity unknown even to the prize-ring of politics. The 
Democratic convention, meeting at Baltimore in July, 
adopted the Cincinnati candidates and platform, and 
Greeley accepted the nomination. This sealed his fate, 
though it was not otherwise doubtful. Myriads of Repub- 
licans in sympathy with the movement refused to see that 
Greeley, who did not alter his position by the breadth of a 
hair, had not gone to the Democratic party but that the 

18 



party had come to him. They would not support a candi- 
date bearing the Democratic label. He made a campaign 
tour of New England and the middle West, rising to his 
highest level in a series of dignified, temperate and states- 
man-like speeches, and achieved a popular vote of nearly 
three millions in a total of less than six millions and a half, 
but every northern state was against him. The distrust of 
Greeley's new alliance was not unnatural or unfounded, 
and Greeley himself, with all his virtues, did not strike the 
popular instinct as a safe candidate for the presidency. 
Apart from this, the military prestige of President Grant 
would have carried all before it. The people remembered 
the victorious general, and they forgot everything else. 
Greeley's defeat was foreordained at Appomattox. 

He was recalled from the strife of the campaign to the 
bedside of his dying wife, who was taken from him on the 
eve of the election. Widowed and defeated, his fortitude 
was still unshaken, and no sooner was the result of the 
political contest declared than he promptly resumed the 
editorial chair of the Tribune. But the calamities that 
could not subdue this resolute spirit were too much for the 
physical frame. The overworked brain gave way, and on 
the twenty-ninth day of that same month of November, 
with little warning, the country was startled by the news 
that Horace Greeley was no more. 

At the dramatic culmination of this illustrious and useful 
life, and the pathos of the closing scene, there was a recoil 
from the extreme of abuse to the extreme of eulogy. All 

19 



classes and conditions of men joined in the universal ex- 
pression of public loss, to which probably every press and 
almost every pulpit in the United States made its contri- 
bution. The city of New York turned aside for the funeral 
observance. Crowds surged through City Hall to view the 
dead face of the friend of the people until the doors had to 
be closed against them. The highest officials of the nation 
and of many states followed him to the grave, through silent 
and uncovered throngs, never seen before nor since save at 
the obsequies of Lincoln and Grant. It was not the empty 
honor often paid to official station, for he held none, nor to 
success, for he died under the shadow of defeat. It was a 
sincere and unaffected tribute to the patriot, the friend of 
humanity, the tribune of the people. 

It has been unworthily said that he died of wounded 
vanity at the judgment passed against him in the election. 
Such empty detraction can neither be proved nor disproved, 
but it is not likely that the ordinary abuse of a presidential 
contest, even followed by defeat, would have put an end to 
his life or seriously disturbed him. In the warfare of pol- 
itics, Horace Greeley was an old soldier. No man knew 
better than he that the loudest clamor of a presidential 
campaign is nothing but the squealing and scrambling of 
a herd of mercenaries to get their noses into the public 
trough or keep them in it. As Hosea Biglow said or sang: 

" They march in percessions, an' git up hooraws, 
An' tramp thru the mud for the good o' the cause, 
An' think they're a kind o' fulfillin' the prophecies 
Wen they're only jest changin' the holders of offices." 
20 



Greeley was not to be frightened or hurt by the thunder of 
the captains and the shouting, and he well knew the fortune 
of war. Even in defeat, it was not wholly adverse to him. 
He received a great popular endorsement in the vote at the 
polls. But he was cut to the heart by the malice of enemies 
and treachery of friends. He was tortured with fear of 
disaster to the Tribune, the child of his affection. He had 
taxed his physical powers beyond endurance, and domestic 
calamity fell heavily upon him at the moment when out- 
raged nature was strained to the breaking point. Surely 
there is enough here to account for his taking-off. 

A prophet is not without honor save in his own country 
and in his own house. Happily it is not left to his native 
town or state to remember Horace Greeley. Many bio- 
graphers have told and still tell his story, the working 
printers placed above his grave in Greenwood cemetery a 
memorial bust, cast in type-metal, his statue was raised on 
the spot dedicated by the city of New York as Greeley 
Square, and towns and counties in the far West bear and 
perpetuate his name; while New Hampshire talks of a 
statue to the president who fed from the hand of slavery 
and went to the verge of treason in holding out hope to a 
slaveholders' rebellion — leaving to distant states the pious 
duty of commemorating her son who lost the presidency 
but kept his honor and kept faith with freedom. 

The loss of the presidency was no misfortune to Greeley. 
It would have added little, perhaps nothing, to his per- 
manent reputation. Fortunate that he escaped the fate of 

21 



some in that illustrious line for whom oblivion would be a 
happy exchange. A man of genius, with the faults that 
usually attend upon genius, he was not of the stuff of which 
presidents are made. High character and purity of pur- 
pose he had, but not the cool and balanced judgment, the 
"sure-footed mind" and "supple-tempered will" that 
ought to be found in the head of the nation. In temper- 
ament he was less a statesman than moralist and reformer, 
though what overflowed from Greeley into the field of 
statecraft would make the reputation of many statesmen. 
He had a human interest in which many greater men are 
wanting. It is enough for his fame that he had a foremost 
part in forging the weapons that struck down rebellion and 
saved the Union that slavery would have destroyed. A 
great citizen, whose example was the shame of every hypo- 
crite and coward, who never stifled his honest thought nor 
bent his knee to power, whose character and voice of 
authority made legislatures listen and statesmen sit at his 
feet, he will be remembered when presidents are forgotten. 
Horace Greeley was first and last a great journalist, 
holding that this character may be made superior to any 
official station, and doing much to vindicate the claim. 
His influence permanently raised the level of the American 
newspaper and the thought of the American people. The 
real power of the press in this country began with Greeley, 
and if it did not end with him, it has gained nothing since. 
The Tribune had no higher merit than its absolute inde- 
pendence, alike of the slave power, which ruled the country 

22 



then, and the money power, which rules the country now. 
We know in what contempt the great editor would have 
held the modern advertising-machine, boasting its circu- 
lation but without character or courage to print anything 
that might disturb the balance of a ledger. Better, would 
he say, better the honest opinion even of a bad man than 
the dumb oracle that sits with hand on mouth and points 
to a bargain-counter. 

It was in the character of journalist that Horace Greeley 
wished to be remembered. Not long before his death he 
left this testimony to the world, in solemn and pathetic 
words that sound of prophecy and requiem. "Fame," he 
said, "is a vapor; popularity an accident; riches take 
wings; the only earthly certainty is oblivion; no man can 
foresee what a day may bring forth; while those who cheer 
today will often curse tomorrow; and yet I cherish the hope 
that the journal I projected and established will live and 
flourish long after I shall have mouldered into forgotten 
dust, being guided by a larger wisdom, a more unerring 
sagacity to discern the right, though not a more unfaltering 
readiness to embrace and defend it at whatever cost; and 
that the stone which covers my ashes may bear to future 
eyes the still intelligible inscription, Tounder of the New 
York Tribune'." 



25 



The Stetson Press, Boston 



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